#sheoldred

The praetor hung in front of her, her form suspended by thick wires. Though she was little more than the frame of a head, horns, arms, and torso, every inch of her was a marvel of phyrexian craft.

True, She was barely ambulatory at present, the black-metal tendrils that hung from her torso just powerful enough to shift the weight of her glorious crown of horns.

True, her powers of sight and sound and vocalization were reliant on backup systems built into her carapace. 

Regardless, she was amazing.

"I mean it," Rona said, low, giving voice to her thoughts. Low, so the other faithful around her could not hear. It was important, and right that they all be here to witness the resuscitation of this wonder...this miracle sent to them, just like Gix was sent to the brotherhood centuries and centuries ago, but Rona's words just then were for this marvel, this praetor of Phyrexia, alone. "No head, but you see. No throat, but you speak. No protection save the integrity of your construction, yet you've crossed the eternities to lead us...something only a planeswalker should be able to do."

"The multiverse is changing," Sheoldred returned, matching Rona's whisper. Soft red lights pulsed from within the praetor's faceless mask. "In time, others will come. But not before I have succeeded where the father of machines failed. Not before I have made Dominaria my own."

A chill ran down Rona's spine. It felt like heresy...to presume to glory that the ineffable never claimed. But wasn't that what they wanted? What they all wanted? Not just to see Phyrexia claim this plane, but to be part of that momentous victory?

"We are here to serve," Rona offered, louder so all the others could hear. 

They murmured their assent, some tapping at metal limbs, jaws, and chests - the secret acts of self-improvement that the Brotherhood of Mishra undertook to seek understanding of the lost Phyrexian masters. 

"By your teaching, and the knowledge we have extracted from what remains of the ineffable's great invasion, we will make ourselves ready to do your bidding."

"And are the faithful prepared to become compleat?" Sheoldred whispered. It was a fascinating whisper. She made herself loud enough to be heard throughout the cavern, but soft enough that it must have sounded like an intimate question to every member of the brotherhood in attendance. “Are they ready to follow the modifications they have made already to their natural conclusion, and extend that same conclusion to all of Dominaria?”

"Ready and eager."

"Always."

"For the glory of Phyrexia!"

"For Gix!"

Sheoldred frowned at that last. It was incredible, how she could do so without a face.

"A distasteful word," she said, now low, for only Rona to hear. "A distasteful name. A failed demon. But no matter." She raised her voice for the others. "Where the ignorant see mutilation, we practice ascension. Where the weak see desecration, we see destiny. We know that the forms of the flesh are a limit to rise above. Fetters to be broken and left behind."

"Yes," Rona replied. "We know. This, I...we await and pursue eagerly."

"I am glad to hear it, sweet thing." The tendrils of sinuous metal that hung from Sheoldred’s torso vibrated with a musical shudder. "Quite glad."

* * * *

There are hands of flesh in me.

There was a time I would have thought it unthinkable. Meat? Shaping me? Fixing me?

Unworthy flesh?

Base, unmodified flesh?

But she moves with such deftness. She appraises me with such piercing insight. Her dark fingers are nimble, and as those digits clear away my seared components and prepare me to receive new flesh, made perfect with oil, I can sense her memorizing my curves and my edges. My steel and synapses. 

I am exposed, but there is a thrill to exposure. A darkly sweet stimulus to the danger, not unlike the joy of machination. Of manipulation. Of domination. 

One could grow to enjoy this sort of thing.

The dominarians have arranged me in the center of this great cavern, strung up like an idol to be worshipped. The deference, the devotion, is charming in its way, but I do not need sycophants at this time. I need Power. 

And I need reliable tools to attain it.

Like this one. The one whose dark fingers are arranging my insides. Preparing me to be filled with the mechanisms and flesh I will need for the weeks and months ahead.

Her face is not slack with witless worship, nor are her eyes full of self-serving intent. She is focused. Discerning.

She is modified, too, but moves with the grace of the compleat. 

Skilled.

Her hands work in the empty space within my torso. She is quick and delicate where she needs to be, decisive and strong where it is called for. I can see it on her face that my form presents a puzzle to her, but it is a puzzle she is solving with a vigor.

I reach out with my tendrils and rest them upon her shoulders. 

She is doing an admirable job, and an admirable disciple should be recognized as such. 

The movements do not falter or pause. Good. She is steady as a phyrexian should be.

I tell her as much.

"I am honored by your embrace," she whispers back. "By...by the touch of perfection."

"Flatterer," I return. I want to see what might break her mask. "Would you care for more of that touch?"

"I would be honored, even more so." Her eye flicks, briefly, to those around her. "But the caress of Phyrexia should be for all."

I scan the others surrounding us. Reverence. Rapture.

And now, just the smallest tinge of jealousy. All of them want to be her. This disciple. This Rona. But I am beginning to suspect they know they do not have the skill to take her place in the project that is myself.

"And all shall know the touch of Phyrexia," I say to them all. "But when one is doing good work, one should accept the praise therefor."

Rona bows her head to me. "Of course. Of course I should."

She will give discipline and be disciplined. Good. 

Good.

My hands caress her face.

Her hair is soft, the curls and kinks a lattice of fibers, flowing in unique, beautiful lines. It is chaos.

Phyrexia purports to despise chaos. Disorder. But it is as part of our culture as any, no matter how much dogmatic fools cover their eyes to that truth.

Her eyes...one is incompleat, but the other is the disciple's own creation, a skillfully crafted weapon of red glass and black steel. Its scrutiny carves swaths as she focuses and re-focuses on my form. There is a dormant heat in that eye. An energy waiting for its bearer to unleash it. 

"You have made much of yourself, child."

"As a disciple of Phyrexia...as a disciple, it seemed imperative." Her eyes - both of them - flick to my mask and back. "Nothing to the handiwork of Phyrexia itself."

"You are doing an admirable job refurbishing the handiwork of Phyrexia."

"I will make you whole again, honored Sheoldred." She pauses, her eyes hard and thoughtful. "Whole, or close enough that you may wield the needle and thread of perfection yourself."

"I am in your hands until then, sweet thing." I say it low. Almost too low for her to hear, and certainly too low for the others.

A god needs a head priest, and a head priest deserves special words for her and her alone, after all.

She nods, her face set. But I can tell. I can see the rush of blood to her cheeks, even if the light of the cavern does not betray the flush to the others.

Adorable. The heat in her face lingers 

It is new, the feeling of another's flesh working inside of me.

New, and not unpleasant. 

* *

* * *

* *

Now:

"Amazing."

Rona was sure she would have felt her face grow hot at Sheoldred's compliment, were it not already so comfortably warm here at the center of the praetor's coils. 

"Amazing."

"It's nothing, 'dred. Hasty work. I'm certain that the creations of Phyrexia would put this to shame."

"This is a creation of Phyrexia, Rona." Sheoldred's voice, no matter the vocal cords she borrowed, was a delight to hear. "We are a culture, not a species, and you are as part of us as any."

Now Rona did feel her face warm. "Still...this rush job..." She gestured all around her, at the colossus that surrounded her, pointing with the welding torch in her hand. It was the fruit of tremendous effort, of course. Even now she stood drenched by her labors, her academy tunic shucked and lying draped over a workbench, her sleeveless undershirt pasted to her back and stomach by sweat. Her work table, a massive, salvaged surface of ebony wood, was littered with tools and piles of blueprints. The day was cloudy, but enough of the sun broke through to make Rona glad of the shade Sheoldred’s coils provided. 

"It is the fact that it is hastily crafted, done with parts centuries out of use, that is so impressive.” The praetor’s waist now ended where her new, massive body began, and as she shifted to move closer to Rona, a great coil of the body moving through the air with a grace that belied its tonnage. “'Waste not, want not.' This is an imperative for every phyrexian, factions notwithstanding."

"It is just the work of my feeble flesh," Rona protested. 

"Do not underestimate flesh, sweet child. The machine will supplant all, in time, but flesh is still capable of great things." Sheoldred took the torch from Rona's grasp, and placed a hand over each of her disciple's, interlacing her fingers of metal with Rona's own. 

"This very flesh worked inside me, and made me whole again."

She guided Rona's hand to her current module - the massive, coiling, centipedal behemoth that encircled them just then. Thick around as a redwood, and over half a mile long at this stage of its construction. Strong legs of jagged metal protruded at intervals, spiked tips anchoring it firmly into the earth. 

It made the space within as intimate as one could find, here in their hidden camp of phyrexian sleeper agents. 

With her other hand, Sheoldred ran her fingers into Rona's hair, along her temple.

"This mind of flesh pieced together the blueprints to turn me into a siege engine to bring an entire plane to its knees."

Sheoldred clenched her fingers suddenly, and pulled Rona's head aside, baring her neck. Her face came in close, so near that Rona could feel the praetor's tingling breath on the rim of her outer ear.

"There are weaknesses to the flesh, yes, but it can be so, so potent, given the chance."

"Give it to me, then. Give me the chance." Rona moved her hands to Sheoldred's face. "I want you to make me compleat. Perfect."

"You will make yourself perfect, my sweet disciple." Sheoldred said, her breath sinking now into Rona's neck. "A truly capable phyrexian will be the architect of their own perfection. There are dogmatic idiots among our numbers who would force a boilerplate perfection on others, but not me. You will find your path to perfection..."

Rona felt her face crease with disappointment and longing as Sheoldred pressed a kiss against her neck.

Then she felt those lips curl into a grin.

"...though it could my privilege to be one small part of that journey."

Rona let a breath. Relief. Anticipation. At the side of her face, Sheoldred breathed in her exhalation, and sighed.

Then, like a striking snake, she seized Rona and lifted her up, up, and set her down onto her work table. Rona had only enough to time to let out a single, undignified yelp.

Sheoldred pressed in close, such that Rona had to lean back onto the table, her palms against the wood. 

"So quiet, my disciple. Do you fearme?"

"Do I fear you?" Rona gasped the words out. "I'm in awe of you. Do you truly know how few creatures in all the world...in all the multiverse, I would bet...could do what you do? What you have done? Your new body has incorporated thousands and thousands of tons of metal and repurposed flesh  - the neural load of commanding such a form would destroy the mind of any lesser being. You are the might of the machine made manifest. Do I fear you? I don't know, but you deserve fear. You deserve Awe. Adoration."

"You say such sweet things."

"I mean them."

"I know you do, sweet thing.” Sheoldred pulled away, coiling around Rona and her work table. “You are honest. Your heartstrings are wrapped about your sleeves. It makes me worry for you."

 Rona shook her head. "I am not afraid to be or to tell what I am. What I want to be."

"Who is talking about fear? I am speaking of advantage. Of the advantage to be gained from hiding who you are. Of the advantage to be gained by concealing the truth from your enemies. How often did you deny Phyrexia while you studied it, while you studied at Tolaria?"

"I never made a secret of my adoration. Not ever."

"Oh, but you couched it as enthusiasm. No, do not argue,: Sheoldred added, diverting Rona's protest before it could leave her lips. "I do not fault you for denying us...for denying me. It was necessary for you to survive. And to thrive, survival is a must."

Rona could not reply. What was there to say? She would not lie to Sheoldred, but she did not want to explore a past where she had acted in fear.

Sheoldred smirked at her, and brushed her lips against Rona's ear. They were borrowed lips, once the property of a priestess of Serra. Now they were Sheoldred's lips. No flesh was inextricably linked to the self in Phyrexia.

How glorious.

"You do not fear the machine. This is good, though the machine is undoubtedly worthy of fear."

"I respect the machine."

"As you should."

"I trust this machine," she replied, letting Sheoldred push her down onto her back. She pushed her instruments and materials aside, and the clattered softly onto the sandy ground. "I leave it to this glorious machine to do with me as it wishes."

"Will you obey the machine? And all its harsh demands?"

"Yes."

"Strip."

Rona swallowed, reached down to the hem of her undershirt, and peeled it off, a brief coolness running up her body where sweat-slick skin met the open air. She let Sheoldred remove her trousers, swallowing hard as the praetor slowed in the act to caress her inner thigh. Her knee. The places where she had replaced her bone with steel and tools of craft.

"I..." Rona pushed the words out slowly, but steadily. "...I have dedicated my life to the machine."

"And it shows." Sheoldred pressed her lips against Rona's mechanical eye, her breath fogging the lens. "You have brought the machine into your flesh, and become stronger for it. You yearn for the machine, in all its edges and relentlessly moving parts. In all its noise and its industry. The machine is cold and it is hot. It is immovable and unstoppable. It will pinch your skin." 

Sheoldred pressed her nails into Rona's earlobes, and she hissed as goosebumps ran across  her neck and shoulders.

"It will scald your limbs."

Sheoldred breathed, suddenly hot, into Rona's chest. Sweat blossomed where her mouth passed.

"It will cook you with its oil and its electricity and its burning surfaces." 

Sheoldred's tongue ran across Rona's collarbone, trailing hot, dripping oil. A groan pushed out from Rona’s lips.

A shrill undignified sound, but she did not regret it. 

Sheoldred bared her teeth. And pressed the full weight of her upper body onto Rona. The breath left her.

"And it would crush you, if it would not be such a waste of your potential."

Their lips met. Their tongues met. The salty-sweet taste of oil filled Rona's mouth. They stayed like that a long while, the only other sound the hum and grind of Rona's module. When at last they parted, Rona's vision was hazy, and slow to return.

Sheoldred was still close."But importantly, my child, the machine can be gentle, when it pleases it to be so..." Without looking, she flicked her arm, and tore the last of Rona's undergarments from her hips. Leaving her bare and slick with sweat upon the wood.

"...so should the machine be gentle or rough with you, Rona?"

She loved the way Sheoldred said her name. The way the faint accent of a tongue practiced in phyrexian script made her name sound like it was vibrating. Shuddering with contained power. 

"The machine should be what it always is. My mind is ready. My body and soul."

"I believe you, sweet thing. You are ever honest. Ever willing. Ever fearless."

Rona laughed. "Ever brave?"

"Nothing so inane. What you are, sweet thing, is ambitious." Sheoldred traced a line from Rona's throat, down her sternum, and across her navel. "What goes unsaid so often in our culture is that compleation - the processes thereof - come with risk. We mitigate those risks through our expertise and constant iteration, but every attempt to seek perfection comes with risk. That risk is not seen since we so frequently compleat the dead, bringing our success rates back to full."

"When you enhanced your legs, you risked your mobility. When you enhanced your eye, you risked your sight. If you trust me to change you, to take part in your modification, you will risk everything. But you have decided what you stand to gain is worth it, and *that* is true ambition."

"I want more."

"Ask me for it." Sheoldred leaned in close.

Rona slipped her hands behind Sheoldred's head. The praetor leaned back, pulling Rona's upper body from the table. 

"I'd prefer to beg you for it," Rona said, her voice sounding even more breathless than she had meant it to sound.

"Very good. Many see begging as a weakness. As an unworthy act." Sheoldred's hands found Rona's cheeks. The cool black steel sent a shiver around her scalp. "But if begging achieves one's ambitions, then it is breath well spent."

Rona focused her gaze on the cheeks below Sheoldred's mask. "Is it...is it what you want?"

Sheoldred brought those cheeks close. So close Rona could have tasted them with an easy flick of her tongue.  She was smiling with pointed teeth. "I don't think we're speaking of what I want right now, are we?"

"N-no."

"So...?"

"Make me strong. Please."

Sheoldred's smile twisted. Playful. "Oh, but you're already so strong, my sweet thing."

Rona's jaw ached as she grinned and scowled in one movement. "Stronger. Even stronger." 

"Even stronger?" Black wires unspooled from Sheoldred's wrists. From her neck and the tendrils below her torso. Like snakes they flowed over Rona's body, tips dragging slowly, maddeningly, in the space between her skin and the tips of her body hair. "What will you do with that strength, Rona of Tolaria?"

"I will serve Phyrexia. I will bring its glory to every corner of Dominaria."

"Of course you will." Shelodred smiles, and a small electric charge runs through the wires, making Rona gasp. "But the same could be said of any Phyrexian, and you mean to be stronger still than that." She guided Rona's hand down from her shoulders to her waist. "Try again."

"I want to be glorious," Rona whispered. I want the form of my body to match the glory I see in my mind."

"Oh?" Sheoldred bared her teeth. "And how might I facilitate that...?"

"Restructure me."

"Sweet thing..." the wires slowed, pressing into Rona's arms, legs, belly, neck. "...It would be my privilege."

The wire slid into Rona in a dozen spots, piercing skin, interweaving with muscle, surrounding bone and slipping into her veins. A dozen separate shudders wracked her body. Her spine arched. Her arms tightened around Sheoldred's waist. 

"Change me," she hissed, fighting for air between spasms. "Ch-change me!"

"Change you how, sweet thing?" Sheoldred smiled, running her hands from Rona's shoulders to her elbows. "Change you where?"

"Everywhere." The words came in gulps. The wires lacing through her were splitting. Branching. She could feel more and more, smaller and smaller, splaying into every corner of her body. Weaving into her muscles. Coiling around her nerves. Filling her like roots fill the earth. Like pipes fill a structure.

"Inside and out?"

"Inside and out," Rona gasped. Her mouth hung open, and she realized with a pang that she was panting. 

Weak. A human impulse.

But Sheoldred just smiled, and brought her lips down to clamp over Rona's gaping mouth.

She felt what for a moment she thought was a tongue, until it snaked down her throat, sliding easily along the roof of her mouth and down into her throat, her longs. For the briefest moment she thought she might gag, but the protrusion fit as comfortably inside her as any of her own organ.

More comfortably, if it was possible.

Something oozed from the surface of the writhing thing within her, oily and sweet and electric over her insides. 

Sheoldred took Rona's hands, and pinned her to the table. More wires, thinner than the ones before, worked their way between her knuckles and joints. Something cool and fluid coated her hands, flowing down to her wrists. 

Her body thrashed. Thrashed to embrace more of Sheoldred. To make every possible inch of contact with that beautiful, perfect creature. 

As if in answer, Sheoldred pressed harder with her face into Rona's and the swelling thing within her delved deeper; into her stomach. Her intestines. Burning and probing and filling her every nerve with a blissful current. The wires were sending shocks of warmth and coolness through her. There was a blissful loosening, like a stretch after a long sleep, and then a tightening. A spasm as her muscles clenched. Her throat and jaw clenched, sucking the oil and ichor off the...the thing inside of her. 

She did not black out, not quite. Consciousness did not leave her so much as overcome her, the rush of crushing, boiling, electrifying sensation making her eyes flash with colors real and unreal, her body flex beyond her control with rapture agonizing and wonderful.

* * 

She came to on the table, as Sheoldred withdrew a mass of tendrils and black flesh from her throat. Rona tried to sink her teeth into the mass. TO keep it inside her for longer, but it slipped out of her mouth and back down Sheoldred’s gullet, leaving that salty sweetness on her tongue.

“Greedy, greedy,” Sheoldred teased. She was still close. So very, very, close. “See to your fingers, sweet thing. I’ve given you something of a manicure.”

Rona sighed, her shoulders slumping and tensing again with a shudder as the claws slid from her fingertips. Sleek, curving slivers of black metal, slick with oily venom. The skin around her hands and wrists, unchanged at first blush, glinted with a faint foiling. It was tough as steel now, yet still as pliable as it ever had been.

“Marvelous,” Sheoldred said. She twisted at the waist, and slithered out of her centipedal module, falling onto the work table alongside Rona. The gaping end of the coils loomed over them, close and massive, like the watchful eye of a bird over a clutch of eggs. 

Sheoldred’s fingers and tendrils prodded at Rona’s skin. “My ambitions require so much time and attention, it is a delight to take a moment to simply…create.” She reached down, over the edge of the table. The space within her coils had been cleared of debris for Rona to work, but here and there a few stray rocks still lingered. She plucked one up - a grey and white chunk the size of an apple, and placed it in Rona's hands.

"Squeeze, sweet thing."

Rona's fingers tensed. Her palms came together.

And the stone burst apart.

"A marvel. You're a marvel."

"But I am not yet compleat." Rona examined the fragments of rock in her palm. She rolled one of the pieces between two fingers, and pulverized it into sand. “Not yet.”

"You are on your way. It delights me to help you along, but I want to see what you can make of yourself for yourself." 

Rona nodded. She felt, suddenly, extremely tired. Her body felt sore, but as she stretched out on the work table, small pleasurable shivers ran up her body, like she had plunged into warm water after a long run.

Sheoldred continued to prod at her, the cool touch of her tendrils providing another wonderful counterpoint to the heat Rona felt inside of her. 

"I feel blessed to have been a small part of your journey. I cannot wait to see what you become next."

They lay that way for some time. One stretching her limbs, one by one, the other probing gently, whispering approval at her own handiwork.

"What will happen?" Rona asked, after several minutes. "Once Dominaria is yours? What world will you conquer next?"

Sheoldred released a long, low laugh, her voice like a gentle rush of steam. 

"I will take my triumph and return to Phyrexia. With the world the Father of Machines failed to conquer under my control, enough of the other factions will turn to follow me that I can lead them across the multiverse, plane to plane, building momentum until Phyrexia is a juggernaut, with enough resources and faithful to knock down each world like a domino.”

“So you will remove Norn?” Rona asked. Sheoldred had told her a little of the other praetors who ruled Phyrexia. They intrigued her, but it was clear there was more dissent than cooperation between them.

"Norn is capable, but she lets arrogance blind her. She thinks she can take every plane at once, in one fell swoop. Because she does not let herself consider what it is to be ambitious, because she would rather think of herself as righteous, she is unwilling to do the long, hard work that succeeding in her ambitions would require. She will fail-”

“You’re avoiding my question,” Rona interrupted.

Sheoldred laughed again.

“That’s because you know the answer already. Norn is not fit to lead. She fears endless conquest. I do not. I relish the thought. An endless life, filled with the endless acquisition by force and wit of an endless line of conquests. All the while, with Phyrexia growing and growing." She traced two fingers down Rona's flank. "Doesn't that sound glorious?"

"Glorious…and then some," Rona whispered back. There was no need to whisper, so deep in Sheoldred's moaning coils, but it felt good to whisper. "But I look forward even more to refining your conquests. To showing phyrexia's bliss to the worlds you take.”

“That will be the final step of conquest,” Sheoldred purred. “And you shall be my steward of that final step. Here on Dominaria, and then on other worlds, if you impress me.”

“I will impress you.”

“I know you will, sweet thing.”

“I mean it.”

“Never doubt that I know you do.”

"Take me with you.” Rona rose up on one elbow, putting her own hand on Sheoldred’s horns. “When you return to Phyrexia. Please take me. I hate to think of you reduced by the eternities, facing all of your enemies without me."

Sheoldred sighed. Her tendrils slid along Rona’s ankles, and her hand found Rona’s cheek.

"I'm too fond of your face, sweet thing. Too fond of it to let it burn in transit through the eternities."

“Make me like you, then. Strong enough to make the journey.”

“Once we have opened the way between planes. It will not be long. Then I will take you to Phyrexia."

Rona nodded, and at last let herself collapse fully into Sheoldred’s embrace. Sweat ran over every inch of her skin. She still smelled of herself, but the perfume of her own musk was now mixed with sweet glistening oil and the sharp tang of venom. 

Inside of her love, her master, her handiwork, her Sheoldred, Rona smiled. 

* * *

NOW

Around my accomplice, my right hand, my handiwork, I smile. 

Rona is sleeping. It was not something phyrexians did often, but she needs to. 

Even phyrexians need to rest and recover. 

The smell of her oil and venom swims in the space between my coils, spiced with the sweet smell of her sweat.

What a prize I have found on Dominaria. What a beautiful dagger to tuck against my breast, to dispatch my foes, and to lick their blood from her edges. 

Yes, she is sharp, yet soft. Eager, yet cunning. Ambitious, yet loyal.

She will break against my foes, that much is certain. I will wield her violently and often. Her edges will chip. Her spine will break.

But I will pick her up again, sharpen her, and thrust her back into the belly of my foes. 

I run the back of her hand along her spine flank. Rona shudders, and curls closer to my arm. She moves her head closer to my hand, rubbing it against my fingers.

Like a cat.

I run fingers of steel over her scalp. Her hair is soft -  a lattice of curling fibers, flowing in unique, beautiful lines. 

This is new to me. Crafting something that I hope - genuinely hope - does not come to irreversible harm. 

New, and not unpleasant.